Archive of articles - December 1998

Brigita Schmögnerová: Nation paid moral price

"Many people have simply resigned themselves."Brigita SchmögnerováAs The Slovak Spectator enters its fifth year of publication, the editorial staff chose two people as 'Slovak man and woman of 1998'. The 1998 Woman of the Year is Finance Minister Brigita Schmögnerová. More an economist than a politician, Schmögnerová has been asked to guide the country through its difficult economic transformation.It is half past seven on a cold Saturday evening in December, but Brigita Schmögnerová is still at work. As Slovakia's new Finance Minister , Schmögnerová has perhaps the toughest job in the cabinet - rescuscitating a moribund economy and designing a package of price hikes that will primarily hit average citizens.Schmögnerová says she does not feel ideally suited to the post she holds. Now 51 years old and married, she cuts a gentle, stylish figure as she leans back in her chair. "From the very beginning I felt that the best position for me would be the same position I had in 1994," she says, referring to the vice-premiership she held in the six-month interim government of Jozef Moravčík.

Vacationing ex-ambassador reluctant to return from Canada

Ľudová Banka has new owner

Communist boss to be prosecuted

Vasil Biĺak, secretary general of the Communist Party before 1989, will face charges over the infamous 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of the former Czechoslovakia. The Interior Ministry says that Biĺak played a crucial role in the affair by personally inviting foreign troops to his country. Biľak, however, denies that he gave the crucial letter of invitation to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.At a December 14 press conference in Bratislava, Jaroslav Ivor, head of the Interior Ministry's investigation section, stated that Biĺak will be charged with violating the law on the protection of public peace, and two laws governing economic relationships between east-bloc countries.

1998 in pictures: shining moments

Government proposes radical solution for IRB bank

Male Pattern Politics

Revised amnesties open old wounds

A controversial revision of the terms of two amnesties has opened the door to an investigation of two of Slovakia's most notorious crimes - the Interior Ministry's thwarting of a 1997 nationwide referendum and the mysterious 1995 abduction of Michal Kováč Jr., son of the country's former president.Premier Mikuláš Dzurinda, in a decision hotly debated by legal experts, elected on December 8 to revise the terms of two amnesties conferred on the perpetrators of these two crimes by his predecessor, ex-Premier Vladimír Mečiar. While constitutional law analysts said the Premier was on shaky legal ground, Dzurinda himself appealed to higher principles in explaining his acts.

Armex defense equipment trading company enters liquidation

What's Happening in Bratislava

1998: Pay-offs and lay-offs (the year in business)

February 17: The Association of Stock Traders publishes a scathing report entitled "The Capital Market in Slovakia: Reasons for Decline and Ways Out."The document calls for improved market transparency, protection for minority shareholders, better access to company information, stronger market regulation and more provocative investment incentives for clients. On March 4, the official SAX stock market index crashes to a new all-time low of 144.27 due to the release of unimpressive preliminary 1997 corporate results and political tensions.

Community Grapevine

"Heaven is Open " - 1998 Christmas programme for UNICEFGraduation day for Weekend Executive Master of Business Administration Programme.The British Council - language courses

Béla Bugár: Hatred "inherited from Mečiar era"

As The Slovak Spectator enters its fifth year of publication, the editorial staff chose two people as 'Slovak man and woman of 1998'. The 1998 Man of the Year is Béla Bugár, leader of the Hungarian Coalition Party, who managed to steer his party colleagues through a tough political transformation and eventually guide them into government for the first time.It's a blustery winter day outside the Slovak parliament, but parliamentary vice-chairman Béla Bugár says the weather suits him fine. "I have a sun allergy," he says, stretching his long legs out in front of him. "But that doesn't stop me from sunbathing, of course."Bugár's stubbornness is legendary among his political colleagues, and is the principal reason that Slovakia's Hungarian minority is represented in government for the first time. In 1998, Bugár presided over the transformation of the three-party Hungarian Coalition into a single party, the SMK, of which he was named chairman.

FNM's Kaník: We're all political nominees

One month after his instalment as the new president of the FNM state privatisation agency, Ľudovít Kaník unveiled a plan to exchange shares in large state companies for some 30 billion Sk ($830 million) in maturing privatisation bonds held by citizens.The privatisation bonds were issued to citizens on January 1, 1996, with a face value of 10,000 Sk each and a maturity of five years. They replaced the voucher system of privatisation, in which each citizen who registered to participate in the privatisation of state property received a book of vouchers for 1,000 Sk with which company shares could be bought.The voucher scheme was cancelled by the third government of Vladimír Mečiar in December 1994, as pressure from the industrial management lobby grew to keep property out of the hands of citizens and concentrate it in the hands of groups close to the government.

1998: "I never hurt any of you" (the year in news)

January 20: Premier Vladimír Mečiar's spokesman, Jozef Krošlák, announces that the government office has received a warning from an unspecified Slovak diplomatic source abroad that Mečiar is to be assassinated before February 25. Krošlák says that the would-be assassins have already been paid 1 million Deutsche marks.January 20: The ruling coalition, consisting of Mečiar's HZDS, the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) and the leftist Workers' Party (ZRS), votes against an opposition bill to have ousted parliamentary deputy František Gaulieder reinstated, defying a Constitutional Court ruling.

Corporate income tax collection posts biggest shortfall in November

Ski and snowboard schools open for season

This winter season has been a pleasant surprise for ski report operators. The country's most famous mountain resort areas - Vysoké Tatry and Nízke Tatry - have already opened for the 1998-99 season, and are peddling a wide variety of ski and snowboard instruction services in addition to their regular fare.Over the Christmas holidays and weekends in January and February, a variety of Slovak ski schools offer cheap lessons from top professionals, a far better bargain than you will find anywhere in the Alps. What follows is information about the best English-speaking ski and snowboard schools for you and your children.

VSŽ elects new bosses

Troubled steelmaker VSŽ Holding has a respected new president with vastly increased powers. On December 14, the new VSŽ board of directors elected former Bank of America executive Gabriel Eichler to the company presidency, and added Thomas Graham, former president of the U.S. Steel corporation, to the Board of Directors.Observers say that the personnel changes will bring much-needed experience to the ranks of VSŽ top management, and will go a long way towards reassuring nervous creditors of the firm's viability.VSŽ, which during 1997 invested heavily in non-core business like sports teams and the media, defaulted on a $35 million syndicated loan arranged by Merrill Lynch on November 9.

Roma contest municipal seats

Hundreds of Romany candidates were bidding for seats in municipal governments across Slovakia as the election campaign for the December18-19 vote came to a close. Romany politicians said that the surge in political participation had increased the unity of the Romany minority and that it promised to increase the power of Romanies to control their own lives."My motivation to run in the municipal election campaign was the fact that if Romanies sit in the local government, they can push things forward concerning the Roma community," said Helena Jonášová, a Romany candidate in the central Slovak town of Banská Bystrica. "You can't solve the problems of Romanies without the Romanies," she added.